As a general database design paradigm, though, I fully agree with you. Databases are databases, not glorified OO data stores or hash tables.
I don't want to use it as an OO data store, I use the filesystem for that. The intended use is to search for the right object. Since it has separate data structures for searching (indexes) I guess that is one of its functions.
However, it still doesn't answer my question about the EV model (where each attribute is given its own table).